Isn’t it Romantic? (2003) by Ron Hansen
Good Reads meta-data is 208 pages, rated 2.93 by 273 raters.
Genre: Screwball comedy.
DNA: Heartland.
Verdict: Charming.
Tagline: Nebraska red. Big, indeed!
It is light, bright, and breezy, so different from some of the author’s other novels, like Mariette in Ecstasy (1991) or Hitler’s Niece (1999) though both of these are memorable, too.
Nathalie is a Bibliothèque nationale librarian specialising in Americana who flees from her very ex-fiancee le beau Pierre. She is Helen of Troy beautiful and he is Achilles manly, but… destiny takes its course.
To avoid him she signs up for a See America tour by bus from New York to San Francisco, sure that he would never follow her, but he does, setting off in love-struck pursuit with only the clothes on his back (a white silk shirt with gold cufflinks and a designer necktie, an Armani black suit, a painted necktie, and handmade tasseled loafers – elegant yes, travel durable no, and a black AMEX card in his wallet) and appears in Omaha to join the tour. As they travel, they bicker continuously in Franglais even when visiting such compelling sites as a spam cannery, the Vermillion corn palace, a talk from a man who had shaken Larry Bird’s hand, stockyards in Chicago to hear Sandburg recited, the view of the fog from the St Louis Arch, Harold Warp’s collection of collections, and then…when Pierre had supposed it could not get worse the bus broke down in the Nebraska Sandhills atop the Ogallala Aquifer on the way to Mount Rushmore skirting Ted Turner’s ranch.
Beau Pierre, tattered from travel, angry at her continued rejection, confused by the English he cannot quite understand, caught between the Loup and Niobrara Rivers in the Sioux country of James Neihardt’s poetry and Maria Sandoz’s novels, he stays with the bus as the driver discovers that the lug wrench isn’t quite right, there is no mobile phone coverage, the spare tire is low, and the jack can’t stabilise the load. Still the driver remains confident he can fix it! In time.
Once again to avoid Pierre’s passive-aggressive hectoring and pleading she stalks off, with her red roll-aboard bouncing and dragging behind her over road grit and sandreed grass to the water tower down the road. In a seething rage, Pierre follows unencumbered by any baggage. So they come to earth in Seldom Nebraska, population 395.
Here they will stay until the next bus, if there is one. Here they discover an unknown world across the language barrier or maybe because of it. She speaks textbook English, unlike the residents of Seldom, and he has a few words and phrases mostly from films. Comedies of error follow.
He discovers from Owen, the town’s one and only (not a very good) mechanic, that red has at least two meanings in Seldom, and she finds a farmer who reads in the air conditioned cabin of a combine harvester. In so doing, they (re-)discover each other. Their carpet ride takes along several Seldomites, too. And while things remain the same, they have also changed.
How anyone could rate it below 5 is one of life’s mysteries to me, but Good Reads comments section is full of mysteries like that. I have read and commented on this book before I was in the mood to renew my acquaintance.
Strangely the Kindle version is available from Amazon USA but not Amazon AU.
Disclosure: I went to high school with Ron Hansen once upon a time.